The Investigative Committee of Russia completed the investigation into the case of corruption in the Pension Fund of Russia. The main organizer of the criminal scheme, the former co-owner of Promsvyazbank, Alexei Ananiev, the main executor, one of the owners of the RedSys IT company, Vasily Vasin, the first deputy chairman of the PFR board, Alexei Ivanov, and a dozen other PFR employees, were invited to familiarize themselves with the case materials.
According to the Investigative Committee, employees of the Technoserv IT company owned by Ananiev, which included RedSys, from 2017 to 2019. participated in the implementation of contracts for the PFR in the amount of more than 5.33 billion rubles. The contracts were obtained with the assistance of PFR employees for bribes amounting to more than 210 million rubles.
In addition to PFR Deputy Chairman Ivanov, the former are suspected of taking bribes: Alexander Rudnev, head of the procurement department; Dmitry Kuznetsov, head of the information technology department; Ruben Efianjyan, head of the automated information system infrastructure management department; services and digital development Evgeny Turchak and head of the Interregional Information Center Konstantin Yankin.
All of them are charged with taking bribes on an especially large scale using their official position by prior agreement (part 6 of article 290 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation).
Last year, we recall, the former first deputy head of the FIU, Alexei Ivanov, was already sentenced to four years, found guilty of taking bribes from Technoserv, Alexei Ananiev.
At the same time, Ivanov and Technoserv employee Alexei Kopeikin admitted to receiving bribes, while Alexei Kopeikin, who, according to some reports, worked in the FSB before Technoserv, was transferred under house arrest in December 2019. Before that, he fully admitted his guilt and entered into a pre-trial cooperation agreement. According to Kommersant, Mr. Kopeikin allegedly testified about participation in fraudulent tenders of arrested PFR employees.
According to the materials of the investigation, unidentified persons from among the top management of the PFR in the period from October 2015 to December 2015 in Moscow and other unidentified places turned to the management of the Redsys group of companies and other unidentified persons with a proposal to transfer them bribes in the form of money for illegal actions to systematically provide official information about upcoming public procurements, assist in the preparation of technical specifications and the formation of the initial maximum contract price (hereinafter referred to as the NMTsK), as well as for general patronage and connivance in the service during the conclusion and implementation of public contracts.
From the side of RedSys, Vasily Vasin, General Director of RedSys LLC, was responsible for the technical interaction with the participants in the corruption scheme from the Pension Fund of the Russian Federation. As the head of an organized group, he involved in the commission of a crime, according to the Resolution of the investigation, a number of employees of the RedSys Group of Companies subordinate to him.
According to “Kommersant”, on February 21, the defendants began to be charged in the final version. At the same time, on February 23, on Defender of the Fatherland Day, the TFR stopped criminal prosecution of seven suspects at once, including Andrey Bogomolov, former vice president of the Technoserv IT holding, Igor Kim, director of the department for working with government agencies, and the ex-owner of Redsys IT integrator Vasily Vasin. Representatives of these firms, according to the materials of the case, also transferred bribes to the management of the Pension Fund of the Russian Federation, receiving in return billions of dollars in contracts for the supply of computer equipment. The decision of the investigation in relation to these entrepreneurs was based on the note to Art. 291 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (giving a bribe), according to which the bribe giver can be exempted from criminal liability if he actively contributed to the disclosure of a crime or voluntarily reported it to law enforcement agencies.
According to the agreements reached, the amount of the bribe transferred to the group members from among the PFR employees did not depend on the number and total amount of government contracts concluded between the PFR and RedSys Group of Companies, but had a fixed monthly amount.
RedSys LLC is owned by the Cypriot offshore Ralieva Management LTD, which is believed to be controlled by Vasily Vasin, a trustee of the Ananiev brothers. According to open data, the RedSys company for November, 2021 was the supplier of almost 450 government contracts for a total amount of more than 16.6 billion rubles. Only the Department of Information Technologies of Moscow had at least five contracts with RedSys for a total of about 3 billion rubles.
Alexey Ananiev officially bought the RedSys Group of Companies in September 2016. According to the Investigative Committee, Ananyev knew that all state contracts of the PFR went to RedSys. After buying the company, the businessman not only continued to give bribes to officials, but even stood at the head of the entire organized scheme. “He put his subordinate on Technoserv, Alexei Ivanov, in the place of adviser to the chairman of the board of the Pension Fund of the Russian Federation,” a representative of the Investigative Committee said.
In 2017, Aleksey Ivanov was appointed Deputy Chairman of the Board of the Pension Fund of the Russian Federation, which allowed him to control all the divisions of the Fund involved in the criminal case. “Ivanov was responsible to Ananiev for the work of the entire scheme with government contracts,” said an employee of the UK.
Currently, Technoserv belongs to the VTB group, which acquired 40% of the company in June 2018. On December 20, 2018, VTB removed Alexei Ananyev, who had previously been the CEO of the system integrator, from the management of Technoserv.
